Get Ready for Pinterest’s Self Serve Ads

Businesses are an important part of what makes social networks work. Pinterest offers your business website everything it needs to reach a new audience, increase visits, and build leads or sales. The California based image sharing platform is now expanding its Promoted Pins with a do-it-yourself (DIY) tool which will allow businesses of any size to promote their Pins and further increase visits to their website.

Promoted Pins will be available on a cost-per-click basis through ads.pinterest.com. Businesses will be able to promote specific pins by paying for the ads on a pay-per-click basis. The platform is already being tested by a few US brands including Vineyard Vines LLC and Shutterfly Inc., and Pinterest is waiting for feedback before it formally rolls out the extended tool. It’s important that you know about the DIY tool so that you can think about how to leverage its benefits.

The highly visual social network’s first and only paid social ads product appear much like regular pins, but have a “Promoted” label and an info box to explain to consumers that the pin they are seeing is paid advertising, in keeping with federal advertising regulations.

While Facebook ads show up either in-stream in the Newsfeed or in the right sidebar, ads on Pinterest will show up in two places – in the Category feed as well as in Pinterest Search results. Businesses looking to reach a highly engaged audience and create a stronger affinity with their brands and products can benefit from this new tool.

Here are some tips that industry experts offer social media marketers to make the most of the new tool when it is launched:

Learn from early ads testers and see if you can see their Promoted Pins in relevant searches and product categories

Know who your audience is

Share images of real people using your products

Be creative – use images that will send out the right message

Be responsive – don’t just advertise

With self-serve ads, Pinterest seems to be following business tactics of Facebook and Twitter which generate billions of dollars from ad platforms aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. In fact, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Chief Executive Ben Silbermann said that Pinterest goal was to make revenue this year. Do-it-yourselfers was a key element of the planned strategy.

About Monica Barber

Monica Barber is the Internet Marketing Manager of MOS, a leading BPO company in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She joined the MOS team in 2013 bringing with her a wealth of experience in SEO, Social Media, web design and Internet Marketing management. She has successfully designed digital marketing campaigns for Fortune 500 and small to mid-size companies and continues creating new MOS digital strategies to keep up with Googleâ€™s everchanging algorithms.
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